THE LONDON LITERARY GAZETTE;ANDJournal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences &c.

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No. 734.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1831.

PRICE 8d.

REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.

TRELAWNY’S JOURNAL.

In the absence of any work of leading interest this week, we give
the first place to an Extract from an unpublished Journal, which bears strongly (we would say
too strongly) on a topic of great attraction to the literary world. It has been called forth by
our review of Mr. Millingen’svolume, and is contained In a communication
from Mr. Trelawny, at Florence. But, though the nature
of the questions at issue, and a sense of justice towards all parties concerned, induces us to
print this document, we beg it to be distinctly understood that we are far from subscribing to
the writer’s violent opinions: we have, on the contrary, marked with asterisks several
passages, among others, imputing misconduct to sects and individuals, from which we utterly
dissent: and we have struck out epithets which we would not ourselves sanction or apply to the
worst of human beings.

Even the Quakers, steel-hardened as they are to human suffering,
(out of the pale of their own tribe,) detesting villanous salt-petre, and interdicted from
aiding and abetting war, could not resist the epidemic which spread like fire throughout Europe
in favour of the Greeks. The expiring embers of the days of chivalry appeared rekindled; yet it
proved but a bonfire of brushwood, ignited by stock-jobbers, loan-mongers, and contractors; for
a moment it blazed, and was extinguished for ever. Still, for that moment, it warmed all
hearts, and its intensity may be judged of by the fact of its having moved the gelid hearts and
stolid visages of Quakers.* They came forth with a contribution of a thousand pounds to succour
a nation of Helots, threatened with extermination, and struggling against measureless odds for
existence. Somewhat late, they remembered it was against their narrow and impossible creed to
aid and abet, in any shape, either in purse or person, war; and the wise men and elders
gathered together to determine how they could extricate themselves from the dilemma into which
the younglings of their flock had plunged them. That their feelings, like a hot horse, had run
away with their judgments, was an unprecedented instance. Their natural sagacity, however, did
not abandon them: they hit on an expedient, by which they served the Greeks in the manner of
Macbeth’s juggling witches,

“That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope.”

Instead of sending the Greeks the money, or the munitions of war, they assisted in their
extermination by sending them nothing but drugs and surgical instruments, and those were
selected without judgment. The Greeks never submit to amputation or salivation; so scalpels,
saws, tourniquets, and calomel, were presented to them; but not a grain of bark, the only drug
a Greek will swallow willingly. The English committee, at their expense, added two surgeons.
The one I am to speak of was a beardless, delicate, and unpractised boy, of the name of
Millingen. He joined Lord
Byron at Cefalonia, during my absence in Greece, and accompanied him to
Mesolonghi.

On my arrival at that place from Romily, immediately after the noble poet had
yielded up his mortality, in the year 1824, I was acquainted by a Mr. Hodges, an Englishman likewise in the service of the
committee, that Dr. Millingen was suddenly and
dangerously ill of a fever, always rife in that accursed city of stagnant waters, green mud,
and malaria. That Mavrocordato and the Mesolonghiot
primates should have done their utmost to detain Lord Byron
and his chest of dollars amongst them, was not to be marvelled at: besides, his name was
powerful as the mountain of loadstone mentioned in the Arabian tales, drawing all that
approached it to their destruction; for, though they were lost, their dollars remained, which
was all the Greeks wanted. So exclusively had Mavrocorduto appropriated,
in imagination, to his own use Byron’s dollars, that, not content
with constituting himself heir, he had extracted a considerable sum from him while living.
Lord Byron had, at Ithaca, undertaken to maintain a family of exiles
from Patras. The eldest son he took to Mesolonghi, and made him his
chibookghee; when, partly for himself, but chiefly as a provision for
his family, he made over to him, on several occasions, between three and four thousand dollars.
Mavrocordato was commissioned to send a portion of the money to the
family, then residing at Cefalonia, and the remainder he undertook to place in the hands of
Lord Byron’s agent at Zante, Samuel
Barff, Esq. for safe custody. I have only to add, that
Mavrocordato retained the entire sum for his own use. The family was
left in utter destitution at Byron’s death; and the young man died
six months after, in want of the necessaries of life. So much for “honest, honest
Iago.”* I was indignant at the doctors;
they must be, I thought, as besotted as ignorance made drunk, to he cajoled by
Mavrocordato, which they were, into a belief that any animal but a
toad could escape the contagious fever with which all the inhabitants were more or less
affected, which no stranger had been ever known to escape, and which few survived. The hordes
of barbarians that besieged it from without, reaping with their swords an annual harvest of
human heads, were not more destructive than the annual pestilence which raged within.† My
letters to Byron, urging him to come to Athens, or, at least, to quit
Mesolonghi, were, of course, intercepted; but so anxious was I to induce him to leave a place
fatal to strangers, that I persuaded two Englishmen, at different periods, to take letters to
him, reiterating my entreaties that he would remove into a purer air. I knew the extreme
difficulty of moving him, so great was his apathy and indolence. He confessed this to me by
once saying,—“I so dislike changing my abode, that if we were driven on the
island of St. Helena, with Sir Hudson Lowe, I should
stay there; for I cannot make up my mind to move under six calendar
months.” Mavrocordato himself, Millingen,
and, with the exception of Mr. Hodges, every foreigner, was suffering from
the fever. Mr. Parry, of the committee, with most of the
Europeans, had withdrawn to Zante ill; and all the other philhelenes in the service of the
Greeks, solicited Colonel Stanhope and myself to remove
them from a place which had been the grave of so many of their comrades. I cursed
Millingen and Bruno, as the two
men, professing the art of medicine, in attendance on Lord Byron, their
victim,* for their ignorance in not having pointed out to him the certain fate which would
follow his tarrying in that pestiferous atmosphere; against which, with his shattered and
sensitive constitution, he could not hope to contend. When he was attacked, the result proved
how totally inadequate was their knowledge; and he, as may he gathered from his last words,
discovered, when too late, that he had fallen into the hands of boyish charlatans. “If
I get better,” he exclaimed, “I’ll leave this place. I’ll go
to the Ionian Islands; for these doctors don’t know my complaint.”
Bruno and Millingen, who were then in the room,
he ordered abruptly to leave it; and on the doctors remonstrating at quitting him in such a
state, he said in passion,—“I order you fellows to leave me! What! is it come to
this? Can I not change my shirt without a set of blackguard doctors in the
room?”—glancing fiercely at Bruno and
Millingen, who slunk off. He then said to Fletcher, his valet,—“These doctors know nothing of my
complaint. I want to know what is my disease. I know these fellows know nothing about the
matter.”‡ In fact, he did send to Zante for Dr.
Thomas. I say these reflections made me curse Millingen;
yet my feelings of humanity impelled me to visit him. I accompanied Mr.
Hodges to his lodgings. We found him in bed, suffering under an attack of the
malaria fever. He had been described to me as a tall, delicately-complexioned, rosy-cheeked,
dandy boy, of simpering and affected manners, such as Captain
Whiffle’s surgeon. Simper, is
described in Roderick Random.
Mavrocordato, too, in my presence, had spoken of him as
“mio caro ragazzino,
Millingen;” which let me into the
secret of how he had cajoled him. When I saw the doctor on his sick couch, he fulfilled the
idea I had entertained of him. He seemed under twenty years of age; Bruno,
also, the Genoese doctor, whom we brought from Italy, was a student under twenty. When I
remonstrated with Byron against engaging an unpractised hoy, his answer
was,—“If he knows little, I pay little. I have got the fellow for twenty
pounds a-year;—is it not a good bargain?” Millingen
whined and cried like a sick girl; talked of his mother,
who had taken the veil, and was shut up in some Italian convent; declared

† When I last visited Mesolonghi, in 1827, this devoted city
had been destroyed. Groups of Albanians and Arnoots sat smoking their pipes on its
ruins, and the Bulgarians had stalled their horses in the halls of its primates’
palaces. Lord Byron’s house, in which he had
lived and died, stood alone erect and unscathed. The Turkish guard at its portal marked
it as the abode of the pasha. By same strange chance it had escaped the general ruin,
and loomed like a lonely column in the midst of a desert.

‡ This is an extract from an account, gathered from his
household, of the death of Lord Byron, written on
his coffin by me, at the house of the primate Apostoli Arestoli,
in which he died, Mesolonghi, April 29, 1824.

98

THE LITERARY GAZETTE, AND

he could not survive the night; thanked me for visiting him; asked
Hodges to sit up with him, as he was afraid of being left alone;
expressed his dread of being robbed, for he had money in the house; and wished to make his
will, and appoint us his executors. Hodges, and those in charge of the
committee stores, had informed me that Millingen had been in the habit of
disposing of the Quakers’ drugs, and that he had opened practice on his own account, not
gratuitously, as he was bound to do by his engagement, besides which,
Mavrocordato had consigned over to him the surgical instruments. By
these means he had extracted money from the poor Greeks. I was astonished that one so young,
embarked in such a cause, and being, as he believed, on his death-bed, should express such deep
anxiety about a few hundred dollars; for he repeatedly solicited me, in the most earnest
manner, to see that he was not robbed, and to witness his will. My experience in malaria fevers
was greater than his; and to me he did not appear in immediate danger. I have remarked, that no
persons are so complaining and querulous as doctors and priests when they are ill; one having
as little faith in the medicine he prescribes, as the other in the doctrine he preaches.* I
staid with Millingen as long as the urgency of my own multifarious duties
would permit; and, pitying his condition, did all I could to serve and console him, for which
he expressed the greatest gratitude—it was as short-lived as his malady. The ensuing
morning I saw him, and he was better; which he mainly attributed to having followed my advice.
He shortly after, I think, removed from the town, and my time was so entirely occupied that I
never saw any thing more of him.

I will here briefly mention, that my first personal dissension with Mavrocordato arose from a circumstance at this period. He had
made some private arrangements with Count Gamba, by
which he was to be permitted to take possession of the money left by Lord Byron, amounting to six or seven thousand dollars. I protested against
this injustice. Mavrocordato essayed, by every means, to persuade me to
consent to it: I remained inflexible. He was too pusillanimous to be open, and threaten force;
but he slyly told me, the Mesolonghiots would not permit the dollars to be taken from the town;
that he had not an efficient force to control the populace, and could not be accountable for
the outrages which might ensue if I attempted to embark the money. My answer was, that 1 had a
force sufficient for the purpose, and that I would protect the property of my deceased friend.
Several notes and messages passed between us, of a hostile nature. Finding myself threatened,
and that Mavrocordato was secretly exasperating the town’s-people
against me, I sent my emissaries to concert with the Zuliots, encamped at Annatolica, about
four miles from the town, in a high state of exasperation at Mavrocordato
and the town’s-people. Not being permitted to enter the town, these Zuliots openly
threatened, if their arrears of pay were not liquidated, to enter by storm, and pay themselves.
My promise with their chiefs was that, in the event of my being attacked while defending my
friend’s property, I would immediately, with the troops of Romiliot I commanded, force
open the gates, and give entrance to the refractory Zuliots. Mavrocordato
got an inkling of this business, which so thoroughly intimidated him, and spread such a panic
amongst the primates, that they hastened in a body to assure me no opposition should be
offered. In fact, from that time I was not molested, and had only to take precaution
against secret treachery; for Mavrocordato, I knew, had ground down the
sword of justice to an assassin’s dagger,* which eventually did reach both Odysseus and myself. The men with me, old Romiliot Klefti, were
dreaded, and an efficient guard. Besides these, Lord Byron’s brigade
of artillery, knowing their paymaster was no more, and that the town’s-people would not
even afford them rations, volunteered in a body to enter into the service of
Odysseus. I divided the brigade and took half of them, with five
mountain guns and munition, for which I had the order of Colonel
Stanhope, then in charge of the committee stores at Zante. For the truth of this
statement I refer to Colonel Stanhope, Mr. Hodges,
and Fletcher, all residing in London. Others concerned
are dead; and I do not, like Dr. Millingen, cite the unsupported authority
of the dead, by forging lies to suit my purpose.*

On Mavrocordato’s being appointed to
a situation in the government, he embarked thither with Millingen. Had they gone by land, their fate would have been different.
Navarino, in its fortress and position, was considered impregnable; and
Mavrocordato, with others, threw himself into that fortress, at the
commencement of the campaign in 1825. Hadjee Cristi, a
gallant, renegade, Bulgarian Turk, who had been taken prisoner by Nichetus, entered into the service of the Greeks. He was entrusted with the
command of the fortress, with a large body of troops—three thousand; and
Mavrocordato (for Hadjee was unlettered) enacted
the civil duties. Millingen was with him. This fortress was taken by the
Egyptian tacticoes, under the command of Ibrahim, nephew
of Ali; for the pasha of Egypt has no son, though
Ibrahim has been called his son. Hadjee made a
gallant defence; for, in truth, he is a noble soldier, but more practised in charging with his
wild cavalry on the field, than in defending fortresses; for which he was, indeed, at unfitted
as a South Sea Islander. Mavrocordato had selected a little island,
situated at the entrance of the magnificent bay of Navarino, as affording the only means of
escape to the Greek shipping which was in the offing, in case the Turks should be successful on
shore. The fortress was taken, and so was Hadjee and his garrison; but the
wily Mavrocordato escaped, leaving his minion,
Millingen, to his fate, with the rest of his trusty followers.

Ibrahim, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian tacticoes,
introducing, for the first time, a disciplined army into Greece, evidently commenced his career
by endeavouring to accompany it with other usages of what is fancifully termed civilised
warfare. With the malignancy, unmitigable ferocity, and individual detestation, existing
between the European Turks and the Greeks, he did not, and would not participate: he is neither
a fanatic nor bloody. The French general, Suliman Bey,
who had embraced Mahometism, and was allied by marriage to Ibrahim, had
great influence over him: as far as I know, he used it properly. On
Ibrahim’s first signal advantage over the Greeks, in the capture
of the important fortress of Navarino, he certainly acted with a forbearance and magnanimity
which is not common even in European kingdoms most vaunting themselves in the march of
civilisation. Not a musket nor bayonet was used after the cessation of hostilities, nor a drop
of blood unnecessarily shed: the prisoners were neither plundered nor insulted.
Ibrahim harangued the Greek leaders, and commanded them to tell the
prisoners to appear individually before him, after having delivered up their arms. When before
him, he briefly questioned them, and then ordered them to deliver up what money or
treasure they had secreted about their persons, signifying that if they hesitated in so doing,
or attempted concealment, he should order them to be instantly executed. However, he gave them
all the option of entering into his service, and retaining their property: he made no
distinction unfavourable to the persons of foreigners serving the Greeks, whom the Turks had
always sacrificed with cunning cruelty. Millingen and an
American surgeon were of the number brought before him: in reply to their plea of being
strangers and medical men, taking no part in the war, merely practising in their profession,
Ibrahim said—“If that is the case, it will signify
little whether you serve Greeks or Turks; and I will pay you better than the
Greeks.” The sturdy republican indignantly refused, and, unhesitatingly throwing what
money he had on the floor, withdrew; but the Englishman (if he is one, which I doubt),
Millingen demurred; and the pasha, seeing he was a pretty boy, smiled
on him, and made an offer to retain him in his personal service. Millingen
only demurred to get the most advantageous terms, and then accepted them. Thenceforth he
continued in Ibrahim’s service till I left Greece, or rather the
Ionian Islands, in 1828. On various occasions his countrymen remonstrated with him on his
apostasy; his only and constant reply was—the Turks are better, and pay better, than the
Greeks. Captain York, or Stewart, of the navy, and a
lieutenant of the Cambrian, saw him at different periods, urged him to
abandon the Turkish service, and proffered him the use of their ships; but the Turks gave him
money, and he continued with them. Now, the Greeks love money—they love women, too; but
gold is their idol—gold is dearer to them than the bright eyes of their mistresses; but
out of three thousand adventurers, of all sorts and conditions, all serving for pay and
plunder, one man alone was mercenary and base enough to abandon the cause in which he was
engaged, and for which he received pay, even to be a deserter to the enemy,—and that * *
* * was Millingen, a self-styled Englishman, a professor of a science
considered the most liberal. His name, and deservedly, was never mentioned in Greece, after his
treachery, without being accompanied by universal execrations. Yet this * * * * comments,
criticises, and runs a-muck with bis scalpel, stabbing at honourable men. Let him disprove
this, or remain with the stigma of a branded liar. If he can prove a single syllable he has
asserted against me, I am content to suffer the same fate. The medicines and instruments given
by the Quakers, and the stores given by the English committee, excepting the portion consigned
to Odysseus, all fell into the hands of the enemy Ottoman.

I have only to add, that it is probable I should not have thus troubled you, by
replying to Mr. Millingen with my pen, had it been
possible to reach him with my hand; but the renegade Dr. Millingen is
settled at Constantinople, protected by the firman of the Porte.

Hadji Christo (d. 1825)
Bulgarian philhellene who led the Greek cavalry until he was captured by Ibraham's
Egyptians fighting at Navarino and shot.

William Fletcher (1831 fl.)
Byron's valet, the son of a Newstead tenant; he continued in service to the end of the
poet's life, after which he was pensioned by the family. He married Anne Rood, formerly
maid to Augusta Leigh, and was living in London in 1831.

Pietro Gamba (1801-1827)
The brother of Teresa Guiccioli and member of Carbonieri. He followed Byron to Greece and
left a memoir of his experiences.

J. M. Hodges (1831 fl.)
An artisan who worked under Lord Byron in William Parry's munitions factory at
Missolonghi. He returned to England in late 1824 and Edward Trelawney reports that he was
living in London in 1831.

Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt (1789-1848)
The son of Muhammad Ali of Egypt; he was the Egyptian general who led Turkish forces
against the Wahabis in Arabia (1816-19) and the revolutionaries in Greece (1825-28).

Sir Hudson Lowe (1769-1844)
Born in Galway, Ireland; he was lieutenant-general and governor of St. Helena where he
had custody of Napoleon.

Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos [Αλεξανδρος Μαβροκορδατος] (1791-1865)
Greek statesman and diplomat with Byron at Missolonghi; after study at the University of
Padua he joined the Greek Revolution in 1821 and in 1822 was elected by the National
Assembly at Epidaurus. He commanded forces in western Central Greece and retired in 1826
after the Fall of Messolonghi.

Elizabeth Penny Millingen [née White] (1821 fl.)
The daughter of Christopher White of Calais; about 1797 she married James Millingen, who
abandoned her after she converted to Catholicism in Rome; among their four children was
Julius Michael Millingen, physician at Missolonghi.

Julius Michael Millingen (1800-1878)
Physician at Missolonghi and author of Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece
with Anecdotes relating to Lord Byron (1831). In 1825 he joined the Turks and
spent the remainder of his days living in Constantinople.

Mohammed Ali Pasha (1769-1849)
The Pasha of Egypt from 1805; he defended the Turkish rule in Greece until his defeat of
his navy at the battle of Navarino.

Nikitas [Νικετας] (1784 c.-1849)
A Greek chieftain and leader of the partisans in 1823; he was the nephew of Theodoros
Kolokotronis.

Odysseas Androutsos [Οδησευς] (1788-1825)
The son of Andreas Androutsos; he was the principal chieftain in eastern Greece and
political opponent of the constitutional government of Alexander Mavrocordatos, who was
instrumental in having him assassinated.

William Parry (1773-1859)
Military engineer at Missolonghi; he was author of The Last Days of
Lord Byron (1825).

Leicester Fitzgerald Charles Stanhope, fifth earl of Harrington (1784-1862)
The third son of the third earl; in 1823 he traveled to Greece as the Commissioner of the
London Greek Committee; there he served with Byron, whom he criticizes in Greece in 1823 and 1824 (1824). He inherited the earldom from his brother in
1851.

Suleiman Pasha (1787-1860)
A former Napoleonic officer who served in the Egyptian Army during the Greek War of
Independence.

Dr. Thomas (1824 fl.)
English physician at Zante who treated Byron in his last days.

Edward John Trelawny (1792-1881)
Writer, adventurer, and friend of Shelley and Byron; author of the fictionalized memoirs,
Adventures of a Younger Son (1831) and Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron (1858).